General election voting leave

Polling day for the 2023 general election is Saturday 14 October.

As an employer, you need to provide employees time to vote on polling day for a general election if they are eligible to vote and have not had a reasonable opportunity to vote before starting work. How much time your employee gets will depend on whether your employee is an essential service worker.

Essential work or services

If your employee is an essential services worker, you must allow them to leave work at some point during the day to vote. You must also provide the employee with a reasonable time to vote and cannot deduct your employee’s pay if they take two hours or less.

Non essential work or services

If your employee is not an essential services worker, you must allow them to leave work by 3pm for the rest of the day, without any deductions from pay, to allow them an opportunity to vote.

Crew of ships

If a ship happens to be in port anywhere in New Zealand at the time of a general election or by-election in that district, the master of the ship must allow crew members who are (or are qualified to be) a registered voter, to go ashore to vote if they ask to. 

For more information, please see the Employment NZ website.